Wow! This Is One Google PR Rollercoaster Ride

It appears like it's gonna be another big round of Google gossip all over the place. Many webmeisters will have a pleasant awakening today...like getting up on the right side of the bed.

The upbeat news is that many of the blogs that suffered a Google PageRank slap a couple of days back have reverted to their previous PageRank positions. And for some it's better than that. Google have also rewarded some of those who previously were dangling at PR0.

Is this the real Google dance that has been delayed for so many months?

Darren Rowse of Problogger reported his blog had been reinstated its PR6. And he's got the skinny on why the recent PageRank slapfest was carried out by Big G.

I’ve had confirmation now from two sources at Google that this latest round of updates was ALL about the selling of text links... This latest furore has all been about the selling of links and is a warning shot to bloggers and webmasters who engage in the practice," writes Darren.

If that's the real issue regarding the recent PageRank slapfest, then it looks like Goog is waging a war against text links proponents. I won't be surprised if this campaign continues. Many would also like to see spam blogs and splogs get their due justice. They've been siphoning contents from other blogs and getting away with it. I'm one of the victims.

Niche Marketing's Andy Beard has also reported that he's got back his previous PR5. And he has kindly listed some of the blogs that were also reinstated.

Meanwhile, has this "Googleflux" affected my blogs? Well, based on what I noticed on the Google toolbar the PageRanks of some of my blogs have changed. Whether the PRs are going to be here today and gone tomorrow, I have no idea.

Let me give you the lowdown:

* CommonSense With Markk: Down from PR3 to 2...and back to PR3.

* The NextPost: Surprise, surprise! From PR0 to PR6. Actually, The NextPost was already a PR4 blog running under the blogspot url. Sometime back I switched to my own domain www.thenextpost.com and was running on empty (PR0).

I've other blogs and websites but that's another story.

Of related interests:
When Big G Gets Mad With Your PR
What the heck, no pagerank updates?
See your blog fly with your own magic
PageRank: 'Massacre' of the blogs

PageRank Slapfest: Massacre Of The Blogs

The buzz is deafening all over the Internet as webmeisters discovered that Big G had gone on a PageRank slapfest. PageRanks of blogs and websites, including some big ones, are being cut down to size for reasons of which everyone can only speculate.

• Could this be a PageRank update done automatically - or manually?
  
• Is this a Netwide "distribution of penalties" or an ongoing adjustments of the rankings?
  
• Has it got to do with the selling of text links and cross-networks linking?

But then some people pointed out that they don't sell links and yet they got hit. And ironically there are spam blogs or splogs that seem to have escaped this crackdown. Is Google going for them?

So where's the rationale?

Google's second wave of pagerank"adjustments" came as a greater shock than the first one. If you have been following this new development, you will know by now that some famous blogs are not spared this round.

Has Big G's algorithmic manipulation of pageranks gone bonkers or is there more to it than meet the eye?

There's hardly any news of anyone being upgraded. Most are just heading south. I reckon Google is not done yet. There might be more interesting development on the way.

Of related interest:
When Big G gets mad with your PageRank...

John Cow Gets The Boot From BlogRush

The news is out. The John Cow blog just got the boot from BlogRush. Of all the blogs, the John Cow blog was among the first one to support BlogRush when the widget first came out while some others were rubbishing the widget.

But just hours ago, Mr John Cow was mooing out loud in his latest post that he's got the chop. Not that it's the end of the world for John Cow where BlogRush is concerned but it's the ironical twist to it that gets his goat.

And guess what...BlogRush's John Reese quickly stepped in to promise to look into the matter and find out what the beef is all about. Hmm, another round of the BlogRush saga is in the offing.

As we all know by now, emails have been posted to those who had signed up telling each one - who's IN and who's OUT.

Patience has been wearing thin at some blogs (I get the same feeling, too) while we wait and wait for BlogRush to finish their "repair job" on their controversial widget.

In retrospect, the initial rush by John Reese and his team to update their system was a bit too hasty.

It was like a half-cooked meal, and bloggers who had continued to carry the widget on their blogs started to get irritated and frustrated about the whole thing.

No surprise then that many blogs had dumped BlogRush. Mr Reese would have done better had he delayed the BlogRush launch until he's got every nut and bolt in place.

He can't go back in time to redeem himself, but just when we'd believe it's time to draw the curtains, in rushed Mr Reese with a new announcement today (after more than a month of silence):

• 10,000+ blogs removed from BlogRush
  
  
• Phase 2 is being deployed
  
  
• And it's gonna be a "busy week ahead" with a hint of "a thin widget" to replace the present one.
  
  Great. Cool!

According to Mr Reese, they had swept those blogs "that did not meet our new quality guidelines" out of their entire network.

But like their earlier shoutout about making changes to the dashboard and all that jazz, this latest announcement also left some issues unanswered.

We're again promised that "lots of amazing improvements are in the works to help you get more daily traffic..."

While Mr Reese is updating his new widget and network, I won't be putting the present one back on my blogs - not yet until I see the real thing. I took off the widget from all my blogs a couple of weeks back.

Now, you'll be wondering - did BlogRush give me the boot, too?
I'm not celebrating with this answer: NO.


Of related interests:
A new widget called BlogRush
Is BlogRush dead in the water?
Big rush to fix BlogRush

Your Opt-In List Deserves A Better E-Mail Tool

Any savvy Internet or affiliate marketers will always tell you that having the right tools for managing your targeted e-mail marketing campaigns is something you can't just overlook if you want to see that the money is in the list. A good e-mail marketing tool is the key to promote your products. It's a proven method.

If your opt-in list is growing and managing it becomes an issue, then it's high time to consider upgrading to something like an efficient bulk email marketing solution. That's when you might want to look into more sophisticated e-mail management software that could easily help your promotions and take you to the next level.

Think of a software solution that could easily create, publish, and track email newsletters, surveys, blogs, autoresponders and RSS feeds. iContact comes to mind. They are one of the leading on-demand email marketing services and they are ready to provide you with a free 15-day trial with technical support during your evaluation. You also get to send 1,500 messages to up to 250 subscribers during this trial period.

iContact's operation is worldwide so it doesn't matter where you reside. Although their software is suitable for small businesses, they have clients among the Fortune 500 companies. It goes without saying that email marketing has become one of the most powerful online tools - a medium, if handled correctly, will help build buyer and seller relationships effectively with simplified communication.

When Big G Gets Mad With Your PageRank...

They are all going south! Right across the board. You can hear the outcry as Big G starts to penalize lots of blogs by dropping their PageRank a peg or two.

It seems like an angry headmaster with a big cane is on a rampage because some naughty students are up to some no good pranks. And it's got something to do with paid links.

Google has openly forewarned that there might be a crackdown on paid links like Text Link Ads, and so it has come true.

More reports are coming in about blogs getting the chop in this pagerank crackdown. PR6 blogs are demoted to PR5. PR4 down to PR3 and so on.

The high-profile site The Stanford Daily took a big dive from PR9 to PR7. Some well-known blogs that also got hit are JohnChow.com, Entrepreneur's Journey and Niche Marketing Blog

Every webmaster wants to see good PageRank because a high PR does bring along many advantages, including raising your position in the SERPs.

I have yet to come across a site that reports an upswing in PageRank. All we get to see is the downswing so far.

Why aren't we all jiving to Google's right tune?

Because there were not much action taken by Big G before and most blogs thought they could continue to get away with paid links and other manipulations to gain search engine ranking.

Could Google have done something that would help to warn those link buying sites that they might have crossed the red line?

There's a good suggestion from Search Engine Land that the green PageRank meter be changed to a red bar as a warning sign.

Is this a rationalization process by Google to bring the paid links issue under better control?

Well, Big G has shown its hand. However, as Search Engine Land puts it, Google itself will still allow paid links to be promoted in another way -- through its own ads. That's somewhat ironical, isn't it?

Of related interests:
WTF, No More PageRank Updates?
See Your Blog Fly With Your Own Magic?
Google Dance: Is Your Blog Jiving Now?

CRM Software: Staying Ahead Of The Game

If you're running an Internet company and sales is the lifeblood of your operation, knowing where your sales are coming from could well be one of the most important aspects of sales lead management.

But when you're juggling with numbers and other data to keep track of things it can be like a smorgasbord of tasks thrown at you all at the same time. So how do you overcome this situation?

To stay on top of the situation and maintain an efficient and reliable system, what your company needs is an innovative Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software system that can take care of all the intricacies of managing sales leads and more. Your agents in the field will be better equipped to determine which lead sources are the most cost effective.

Enter AIMpromote.com with the right solution -- a service that's an on-demand web-based software application. It's also referred to as "software-as-a-service" which means that there is no software to download or install.

This integrated CRM system takes care of sales lead, cuts down the learning curve and gives you the competitive edge by improving your business intelligence.

AIMpromote's innovative crm software application addresses the needs of Internet companies looking for an easy and efficient integrated system for their websites. If you don't know where to start to look for one, AIMpromote.com have just the right deal up your alley.

When you're doing business online a company that understands the value of a good software integrated system will definitely have the added advantage over one that's not using it. This is where the newly improved crm software from AIMpromote.com will make all the difference.

This new version will be an ideal integrated system that can bring about better and positive customer relationship and generate sales because the system keeps you in the know about all aspects of your business.

Any savvy company will fully grasp the importance of a fully integrated system that can take care of campaign tracking, sales force automation and lead management. Better still when it's also flexible enough to be used independently.

AIMpromote.com have been around long enough to pass on their experience in providing integration systems that address CRM to a number of clients.

The primary aim of this user-friendly system is to focus more on making sales in Internet marketing. A user can easily monitor the ROI (Return Of Investment) of each campaign and know where his best leads are coming from.

There's a full-featured 14-day free trial when you sign up. An online video demo can also be viewed at their site.

Would You Wait 10 Years To Earn Some Small Change From Agloco?

It's really amazing to read the latest revelation about this "global company that will help you own a bit of the Internet."

When it was launched long ago in 2006, the great promotional hype was like a giant tsunami that swept along thousands of believers including some famous names.

Looking back it's amazing that some of these online marketers were plugging for this new start-up like it's the greatest sensation to hit the Internet. The herd followed.

It's free to sign up...it's gonna make you a good chunk of passive income...the people behind have raw talent...they have pedigrees and reputations...it's a revenue driven business model...you get share option...go ALGOCO!

Install their long-delayed Viewbar, surf the web and you'll be paid. And the more you do it, the more you get paid. Sounds familiar. Remember AllAdvantage?

So what's the latest revelation about AGLOCO? In their latest update on "distributions to Members" published on the company blog, they are telling members...

During the last three months, June, July and August, AGLOCO lost slightly more than $100,000."

And to make it look like things are looking up, they added...

The AGLOCO losses are getting smaller each month and at this point, we anticipate the September loss will be $10,000 to $15,000."

If you're good at making sense of money, go figure it out for yourself where it's leading to for those hoping for a payout.

What payout? When? How about 10 years from today? Does that sound like a good deal? Read the rants from one of AGLOCO's most fervent critics.

Any right thinking person will look at it as an incredulous proposal from AGLOCO. To announce something like this does not reflect kindly on a company that has performed a lot of twists and turns in their venture.

It's AMAZING that despite all this, there are still a number of astonishing comments in favour of the announcement. Some people always look on the bright side.

What can you achieve in the next 10 years other than surfing the web and depending on a Viewbar to calculate your pitiful earnings?

Well, you could get a good paying job, get hitched, win a lottery, become an American Idol, get elected as president, blah...blah...blah.

Or maybe time will run out on us on this planet before we can say "Thank you, Algoco."

Of related interests:
Surf the Web: Money for Nothing